


Post-mortem Revelations

by paintmelilacs



Series: Post-Mortem [2]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types
Genre: Character Death, Crushes, Gen, Heavy Angst, Jason grace ??? that bitch deaddd 🤭, M/M, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unrequited Love, dead as hell 😌, introducing new ideas abt death, speculations about death, what shoes he got in in his grave 🤨😏
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-03
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:14:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27048535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paintmelilacs/pseuds/paintmelilacs
Summary: Because—even after everything—Jason’s just not really here anymore, is he?**or**Leo visits Jason’s grave.
Relationships: Jason Grace & Leo Valdez, Nico di Angelo & Leo Valdez, One Sided Jason Grace/Leo Valdez
Series: Post-Mortem [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2018927
Comments: 10
Kudos: 39





	Post-mortem Revelations

**Author's Note:**

> OKAY FIRST OF ALL, i would like to note that nothing i write is ever beta read 😶 i would love a beta reader but i dont have one atm  
> (that probably explains some things-)
> 
> SAD ASS ONESHOT BELOW. MIGHT EXPAND IT LATER.

Death had always been something easy to understand for Leo. 

He knew that it was inevitable, and it took more than a few desperate prayers to evade it. He knew it was fact. He knew it was law.

But he is also a believer of science, no matter how crazy the immortal world is; he believed in the fact that energy cannot be created nor destroyed. The very first law of thermodynamics.

And sometimes, when sleep slipped past his fingers and the hour was late, Leo would daydream about the mechanics of the universe, hoping it would put him to sleep.  (it never did)

It seems silly, because why ponder the universe when you know the Gods who created it, but....

There were still so many questions left unanswered. Leo didn't like that. 

He didn’t like it so much that sometimes he would curl himself up as small as he could and press his nails into his leg until it hurt. 

....

....Everything just transfers, Leo supposes. One pool of water to the next. Creating the current of the universe as mortals knew it.

The Underworld is one example of that. Cycle of rebirth, and all. 

The Underworld....Hades never really explains how the heroes of Elysium manage to escape the vicious rip of the current.

And that’s because they don't.

Somewhere between him and Nico’s midnight conversations and the alcohol they drank with it, Leo asked him  about it. He remembers the way the boy’s eyes flashed and he skirted around the answer as long as he could. The answer shook Leo to his core. 

Heroes don’t actually to break free from the current with their selfless actions and heroic duties—they never did. Because apparently energy doesn’t care what you did for the world, what tears you shed and what lives you took, whether you existed to build or to destroy. It had no fucking bias.

So the end? Of everything? They didn’t escape it. The heroes simply _evaded_ it. 

(All.....All of it. It’s for _nothing_.)

The Underworld has a little pocket, a small safe space where for _just for a small sliver of time,_ your soul is plucked from the shredding pull of rebirth, and _that’s_ where the heroes go. That’s fucking Elysium. 

Nico told him it was only really there to offer a resting place for these weary souls. A warm home, and a reunion or two, until eventually they’ve seen all it has to offer and decide to go freely.

Only its not free. It’s just some sick illusion of choice that made Leo’s stomach bubble with acid and his hands wring with frustration. 

It’s sick. He told Nico that. They’re making the conscious decision to have their mind ripped from their soul and grossly packed and stitched into someone else’s—like some fucked up project of Frankenstein—only to end up that they were _lied_ to? 

Yeah, Leo’s not so warm to the whole “death” thing anymore. But you wouldn’t fucking be either, in his situation.

It’s just.... he knows that he’s still _there_ , probably somewhere down in the Underworld sipping margaritas with Achilles, but when you wake up every morning with the same weight caving in your chest and the feeling of his face slowly drifting from your mind it’s just—

Jason’s not really here anymore, is he? 

.........

...

...And Leo’s not dumb. He may act like it, but he’s fucking not, and he can _tell_ by the anxious whispering, the endless memorials and cautious looks, the tales they tell at campfire, and _fuck_ he wears Jason’s bead around his neck everyday _for God’s sake—_

He’s not. 

Jason’s not here anymore.

.........

It’s been one year since the day it happened. 

Standing at the memorial, Leo thinks the stone looks too fresh still. 

The grave is still exactly how he remembered it. A raised marble casket with the most intricate carvings on the side, never-dying flowers plaguing every corner and every crevice, and meaningless quotes strewn about the place, as if the words meant anything to him now. 

Despite everything—all the misery he’s soaked in and the sick taste it leaves on his tongue and throat —Leo does not cry. 

He doesn’t know what it is about it. Graves just don’t make him sad. Never have. Leo needs to see that moment where someone loses their life to truly believe their gone, but he can’t even do that because Jason died by himself. Greedy little motherfucker.

He got a grave anyway, for tradition and respect’s sake, but it was empty. Just a marble chamber underneath and tucked away into a pretty little mortal graveyard, just like how he would have wanted it.

Leo scrunches his face in disgust.

His mouth tastes like bitter, bitter resentment. The mucking smoke of ceremonial candles still coated his tongue from when they first buried his soul six feet under, when Leo had to squint his eyes shut as to not catch on fire while Piper sobbed into his chest.

(She clinged onto life even more than Leo, and he had breathed his first breath twice.)

So Le o doesn’t cry. Just stands over the grave in the same jacket he’d lent Jason countless times at Wilderness years ago, shoulders slumped, gripping the necklace he made for him tightly between his fingers.

His grave was set in a spell to preserve it just as it was the first day, but the cold still seeps in through the cracks, making the grass fleck with frost. Leo could see the rain gently thrumming it’s fingers on the barrier, sliding off the dome and onto the ground, like it was trying to lull the sleepless people underneath.

It was broad daylight out. Broad daylight, even if the sky was matte grey and the light was dim with early morning. If Leo walked just a bit, he could spot cars passing down the highway. 

Seeing Jason’s grave was like seeing his death out in broad daylight.

Leo walked forward, feet crunching on the perfectly cut iced grass, and brushed the cold marble. So cold it stuck to his fingers.

It hurt more in the shadows.

Every time somebody stopped talking halfway into their story because they realize _he_ was in it, the slip up of his name and the headturns to Leo that follow it, the whispers that fill the mess hall when Leo emerges for the first time in weeks. 

They’re all waiting for him to explode. Leo suppresses the spark every time. 

They didn’t understand. And that’s okay, because everyone’s got a different pain, but...it’s nice to be understood sometimes. 

Piper, he thinks, is the only one who knows what it felt like to Leo. Not only to just lose one of the greatest friends he’d ever had—a piece of his family—but to lose that special something more. 

That reason, the same one is why the necklace he held so tightly in his fist was a little metal jay bird. 

Small, only made of tin, the bird was supposed to be a joke. _Jay like Jason,_ he said.

Yeah, it’s bittersweet to Leo too.

He knew Jason would never feel the same. He knew it. It was okay, Leo didn’t expect him to. A little crush. That’s all it was. 

The day Leo gave him that little necklace was three days before he left. Jason cupped his cheek, and promised he would be back. He then clipped the little bird onto his neck with a goofy smile, and never took it off. He promised he would get a necklace for Leo too when he got back. And Piper. And then they’d all be matching.

Jason left for his quest three days later. Leo never got a necklace.

But, he did end up getting Jason’s after it was removed from his stone dead corpse. Ha. Funny how that works out.

Nothing like a little death to make a crush feel like love. 

Piper held a love like that for Jason too and so she knew what he felt, truly, and they clinged together like spurs on a shoelace, shivering. Together, they waited for the nightmare to be over. (gods, when is it over?)

But it won’t matter how many anniversaries he puts between himself and it, or how many comforting hugs and kind words he gets from the others who _don’t quite understand_ , or if Jason is still down there, _somewhere_ , waiting out the inevitable for him.

It doesn’t change the simple fact that Jason is not here.

**Author's Note:**

> kudos (kud-kudi...?) and comments appreciated 😌
> 
> side note: its election day and i might scream


End file.
